The Local News by Miriam Gershow

said, patting the back of her head, like maybe she’d just realized it was tangled back there. She recited the couplet, talked about wanting to call the police but knowing they would do nothing. Her words came out quickly. She was wearing the same sweatsuit that she’d worn the day before. David Nelson had a smile pasted on his face that was starting to look painful. My mom was on leave from her vet tech job. In the first days she’d said it was because she was needed by the police and the search-and-rescue teams and reporters camped out on our street, which was more or less true. Now, though, she filled her days scribbling notes, calling the Red Cross and Goodwill for food donations for the searchers, calling the police for updates, organizing and reorganizing the impromptu filing system that was taking over our kitchen, a tall rusting filing cabinet dragged from the garage and placed next to the table. It was filled with letters and area maps and newspaper coverage and less explicable items too: pictures of other missing kids ripped from milk cartons or junk mail flyers, handwritten lists of Danny’s favorite foods, a whole page of his nicknames—Nack, Danny-O, D-Man. I’d never heard anyone call him Danny-O or D-Man. Those, it seemed, my mother made up in some fanciful, self-soothing abandon.
    “Dad told me,” I said, reminding her of all the things that the police told us: harmless, nut case, best to just ignore it. She nodded at me, in a way that did not mean yes as much as
Go on, go on.
    I didn’t know what to say. I never knew what she wanted, really. I held up my book again, reminding her of her interruption. This sort of dropping in and chatting, this wasn’t something she and I had ever done particularly well. It always seemed a strange, pale imitation of the way she stood in Danny’s doorway as he curled his free weights, the two of them talking lightly about nothing. How was his practice? What was that bruise on the back of his thigh? Was he getting enough sleep? Had she told him the story of the three-legged dog who came in for shots and nearly licked her to death? I would half listen to them through my door, derisive, curious, jealous, relieved.
    “I still need to call the Kiwanis for Saturday,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’ve left two messages already and nobody has called back.” We were on to the searches. This is how conversations worked with my mom now. “And I don’t think the phone tree worked this week. I know there are still a whole lot of people who don’t know where we’re starting from.”
    “I’ll be there,” David said quickly. “Near Shore Acres Mall, yeah?” Mom nodded at David. It looked like she was going to say something, but Oliver started barking at her. She picked him up and cooed at him about being a good boy. He nuzzled his wet nose into her chin. “Good boy, good boy,” she kept repeating.
    “Okay, thanks.” I lifted my mug in a salute. “Thanks for this. We have to get back to work.”
    “Sure, sure, sure,” Mom said. She kissed Oliver on his dog lips. David Nelson and I exchanged disgusted glances.
    After she left, David brought his mug to the bed and sat Indian-style where Oliver had just been. I curled my legs under my butt, making myself smaller. I had the feeling of a cactus or a porcupine.
    “Your poor mom,” he said.
    “You sound like Min Mathers,” I said.
    “I’m just saying …” He paused, as if he were trying to figure out what he was saying. “It’s got to be tough.”
    “Duh.” I leafed through
Richard III.
Queen Elizabeth’s noblemen were begging for their lives; Richard, about to kill them anyway, didn’t give a crap.
    “Do you think about it a lot?” he said.
    “What do you think?”
    “I don’t know. You act like you don’t, but how could you not?”
    My float sat untouched on my nightstand, the ice cream melting into the pop.
Today shalt thou behold a subject die for truth, for duty, and for loyalty,
one of the